Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh continued their long win streak with a win in Long Beach today, making it 18 straight tournament wins and 101 match wins in a row. They beat the feisty Boss-Ross, 21-14, 21-18.

The duo plan to skip next week's AVP San Diego Open to prepare for the upcoming Beijing Olympics.

Saturday, July 26, 2008

According to the LA Times, beach volleyball Olympians aren't happy with USA Volleyball's preparation and organization of their trip to Beijing:

[Misty May] Treanor said she was "disgusted and ashamed" with the way USA Volleyball and Olympic officials have prepared and organized the U.S. beach volleyball team's trip to Beijing to compete in this year's Games.

...

"Nothing has ever changed with USA Volleyball," [Elaine] Youngs said. "Every single Olympics is so unorganized, the people they hire are incompetent, they have no experience."

Damn. Not like EY is known for censoring herself, but when Misty May is going on the record like that, you know something is pretty effed up.

Apparently, there's talk of a split and formation of an independent beach volleyball federation. To me, that doesn't sound like such a bad idea. As it is now, beach kinda seems like the red-headed stepchild over at USA Volleyball, at least the way they're represented on their site and in press releases and such.

If it's to grow as a sport, it seems to me there needs to be a federation with beach volley as its top priority.

Four Beijing '08 Olympians met on the sands of Long Beach today, and it was the underdogs who walked away with the victory.

Sean Rosenthal nabbed his first California victory today with partner Jake Gibb, beating the world's top-ranked team of Phil Dalhausser & Todd Rogers in just two games, 21-14, 21-14.

Dalhausser & Rogers had an uncharacteristic match full of unforced errors and Gibb-Rosy were quick to capitalize, at one point scoring a run of 14 points to 1.

The big question now will be how this loss affects Rogers-Dalhausser's confidence going into the Beijing Olympics. They had been riding high on a win streak of 37 games and 8 AVP season wins, so being able to shrug off this loss will be important.

On a technical note, the broadcast on NBC today was totally FUBAR, complete with total blackouts, freezes at critical moments, and lots of switching back and forth from HD to Craptastic quality. And now that I think about it, it was totally jacked up last week, too. Only on NBC, and only during the AVP broadcast.

WTF is up with that? I might actually have to start going to tournaments again.